Bangkok. I canali, tra morfogenesi urbana e transizione ecologica = Bangkok. The canals between urban morphogenesis and ecological transition

The research presented traces some phases of Bangkok’s urban morphogenesis process, taking the canals or klongs as the main subject of the descriptive operation. In this way, it identifies some fundamental stages in the growth process of the Asian megalopolis. These stages rhythm the phases of urban diffusion that lead to the progressive marginalisation of the waterways at the expense of their historical and social im- portance, typical of the early stages of the city’s development. The result is an urban reality dominated by road construction, in which land consumption causes the continuous erosion of the original agricultural landscape and its water infrastructure. This process has not only spatial effects but also social ones, with a series of cru- cial interactions linked to the spread of self-seg- regating housing models that prevent the es- tablishment of any form of relationship with the context and create an alterity between the tradi- tional way of living in contact with the water and the way determined by dependence on the car. The objective of reinterpreting the dynamic char- acteristics of morphogenesis allows us to redis- cover the latent potential of the canals and their residual value in terms of space, landscape and the environment, with particular attention to the implications of climate change and the ecologi- cal crisis we are currently experiencing.